George Winokur (February 10, 1925 - October 12, 1996) was an American psychiatrist known for seminal contributions to diagnostic criteria and to the classification and genetics of mood disorder.
[1] He is known for having played a key role in the development from the 1950s of diagnostic criteria for mental disorders, particularly as a trio alongside Eli Robins and Samuel Guze.
[3] He made seminal contributions, often along with Paula Clayton, to establishing a distinction between unipolar and bipolar depression, and was one of the first in America to prescribe lithium for mania.
While he considered them an improvement, he wrote that it was a fiction that the data could speak for themselves, and that it was impossible to eliminate clinical judgment in diagnosis, or carelessness or inconsistencies in how criteria are applied.
[4] In 1988 an article co-authored by Winokur stated: "Making up new sets of diagnostic criteria in American psychiatry has become a cottage industry with little attempt at quality control".